Samsung Confirms Tizen Phones for 2013

Samsung confirmed it will sell phones based on the Tizen smartphone OS this year.

Call it a hedge. According to Businessweek, Samsung said today that it will bring out "new, competitive" phones based on the Tizen OS this year, giving the world's largest mobile-phone maker a modern, in-house alternative to operating systems controlled by Google and Microsoft.

Samsung's U.S. division declined to confirm the Businessweek story to PCMag, but it's perfectly plausible, and I suspect the response I got came because it's the middle of the night in Seoul and they can't get anyone at headquarters to respond right now.

Samsung is a smartphone giant, but it's mostly dependent on others for its mobile platforms. The company makes dozens of different models powered by Google's Android, including its successful Galaxy S line. Samsung also built a range of Windows Phone 7 devices, before turning lukewarm on Windows Phone 8 with a single phone (the Ativ S/Ativ Odyssey) that hasn't yet reached the U.S.

But the company understands that you're vulnerable if you're entirely dependent on others. So, a while ago, Samsung developed bada, a quasi-smartphone OS that found some success outside the U.S. In the third quarter of 2012, bada had a 3 percent global market share, beating Symbian and Windows Phone, according to Gartner.

The bada effort merged into Tizen, which had already swept up a bunch of other Linux-based OS efforts including Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin (which together became MeeGo) as well as the Linux Foundation's LiMo.

Samsung's support for Tizen puts the OS leagues ahead of other new mobile OS projects such as Firefox OS, the brand-new Ubuntu for Phones and Jolla's Sailfish OS, none of which are available on any current phones. We've heard previously about a ZTE Firefox phone and a Jolla phone coming in 2013, but Firefox isn't so far a core OS for ZTE, and Jolla is tiny.

Still, Tizen's partners have made promises they haven't delivered upon. At CES last year, Intel said it would "move a lot faster" and that Tizen tablets might appear in 2012. That hasn't happened.

On December 31, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said Samsung's Tizen phones would come to Japan's largest wireless carrier, NTT DoCoMo. There's been no word yet on whether Tizen will come to the U.S. Samsung never released any bada phones in the U.S.

Samsung also hasn't given any details on the timing or specific models of upcoming Tizen phones.

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 9 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, one of the hosts of the daily PCMag Live Web show and speaks frequently in mass media on cell-phone-related issues. His commentary has appeared on ABC, the BBC, the CBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, and in newspapers from San Antonio, Texas to Edmonton, Alberta.
Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer, having contributed...
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